If MSNBC was willing to fire Don Imus for referring to Rutgers women’s basketball players as “nappy headed hos” and to suspend David Schuster for suggesting that the Clinton campaign was “pimping out” Chelsea Clinton, shouldn’t Fox News hold Bill O’Reilly to similar standards for threatening a “lynching party” over Michelle Obama’s comments about her husband’s campaign?

Not sure I have much to add here, but throwing around phrases like “lynching party” is not something that should be taken lightly. Media Matters has more information about O’Reilly’s incredibly offensive and thoughtless comments, including contact information for Fox News and the producers for O’Reilly’s radio show if you feel inclined to complain.

Update: Obviously there’s a larger point here about the historical role of lynching, not just terms of physical violence but also in terms of the psychological threat it represented. And this story only reminds us of the need to be attentive to this history and to the connotations that such words carry.